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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20336 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/rubio-says-us-will-start-revoking-visas-chinese-students-2025-05-28/

WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday the United States will start "aggressively" revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.

If applied to a broad segment of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese university students in the United States, the move could disrupt a major source of income for American schools and a crucial pipeline of talent for U.S. technology companies.

President Donald Trump's administration has sought to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of wide-ranging efforts to fulfill its hardline immigration agenda. In a statement, Rubio said the State Department will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong.

"The U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students," he said.

To what extent is this foreign/defense policy, and to what extent is this a fig leaf for prior CW against higher education and foreign students? Shouldn't we be trying to deprive the PRC of human capital? Being anti-CCP, I'm concerned about stuff like this, but a "to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students," where "Chinese student" is the only criteria given by the Secretary of State doesn't seem like a good idea.

Edit: A longer quote of Rubio, via Politico (???):

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” he said in a statement. “We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.”

If anything, this just seems dumber - why is it "Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," rather than "Those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party, regardless of citizenship?"

Noah Smith makes a good case that international students are good, but it's paywalled. However, here's a quote answering the question of whether foreign students displace or subsidize native students:

All this tuition money from international students allows American universities to pay for more spots for domestic students. In fact, you can see this effect in action. Shih (2017) looked at the effects of various exogenous shocks — baby booms in foreign countries that led to more international enrollment in the 90s, and then 9/11, when increased suspicion of international students led to a sudden drop in enrollment. He found that when more international kids attended a U.S. university, the number of spots for American students also rose:

I focus on a dramatic increase in international enrollment at U.S. graduate programs during the late 1990s, which suddenly reversed following heightened scrutiny of student visa applications in the aftermath of 9/11…The primary findings reveal that international students actually raise domestic enrollment. Preferred estimates indicate that 10 additional international students increase domestic enrollment by roughly 8…This positive effect also appears during the bust period…

At the margin universities can charge international students high prices and use the profits to subsidize the cost of enrolling more domestic students…I provide multiple forms of evidence that indicate cross-subsidization underlies the crowd-in effects. The positive impacts appear to be driven by foreign Master's students, who pay full-sticker price tuition…[T]he positive impacts are concentrated on domestic graduate students in academic programs, who require subsidies…[T]he crowd-in effects are most pronounced among public universities which prioritize enrolling domestic students, pricing tuition below cost for state residents, while also charging foreign students tuition rates between 2 and 3 times higher.

If you were to kick out all of America’s 1.1 million international students, Shih’s estimate would suggest that domestic enrollment would fall by 800,000. Even if it were only half or a quarter of that, that’s a substantial number of Americans who wouldn’t get the chance to go to college.

And the burden would fall hardest on state schools, for whom the difference in tuition between foreign and domestic students is highest, and who have already suffered the most from funding cuts. State schools are much more important for uplifting the American working class into the middle class than Harvard or MIT. So by kicking out international students, Trump is depriving the working class of life-changing educational opportunities.

There is certainly espionage happening that needs to be dealt with, but the wording of the announcement would seem to indicate that implementation of this policy will, like most things to come out of this administration, be indiscriminate, haphazard, amateurish, and probably lead to a worse outcome than if nothing had been done at all. If anyone thinks we can win a cold war against China without immigrant brainpower, they are out of their minds. However smart you think white kids from the midwest are, they aren't going to become ubermenschen who are worth 4 Chinese apiece just because we banned affirmative action and are kicking out all the international students.

If anyone thinks we can win a cold war against China without immigrant brainpower, they are out of their minds.

Depending on the amount of espionage we could in fact and quite confidently say we would win if we blocked Chinese nationals from all US STEM.

Wet streets don't cause rain, and top-ranked schools don't cause good students. If China didn't need our schools, their nationals wouldn't be here. If those Chinese geniuses are making such great contributions, they wouldn't have been let out of the country. There is an alternative explanation, which I'll address in a moment.

There were 76 million people in the US circa 1900 and they were 88% white. The American Empire followed, and it wasn't Chinese students building it. We did have a glut of Jewish talent but if anything the peak of our Empire was smaller than it would have been as their contribution was hastening the inevitable that was American victory.

There are twice as many whites in this country now, so we can also confidently say that just given a larger population there must be far more geniuses and far more overlooked geniuses. This relates to the alternative explanation, which is China does sequester their best and brightest, but they let the lessers attend school in the US because of the most fortuitous consequence of reducing opportunities for Americans.

Anymore, be it either true success from China or paper success, there is no reason for their nationals to be allowed continued participation in US STEM. I do agree this plan will be haphazard and amateurish, but not truly indiscriminate, as their nationals in US STEM should be indiscriminately and unceremoniously expelled to the last. But we could reach a happy medium with reciprocity: they can have, given the difference in populations, 1 student in our schools for every 5 we have in theirs.

If those Chinese geniuses are making such great contributions, they wouldn't have been let out of the country

Consider that countries are subject to pressures other than maximising innovation. Letting internationally-minded high-openness intellectuals out could be a win-win proposition for China and the recipient: the target country gets to capture their intellectual output, while China is rid of someone who would make trouble/destabilise the system/gets to evaporatively cool its citizenry into relative complacency.

There are twice as many whites in this country now, so we can also confidently say that just given a larger population there must be far more geniuses and far more overlooked geniuses. This relates to the alternative explanation, which is China does sequester their best and brightest, but they let the lessers attend school in the US because of the most fortuitous consequence of reducing opportunities for Americans.

What is the mechanism by which a Chinese student at a US university (who pays higher tuition than the average native, especially the average native at risk of being "overlooked") reduces opportunities for Americans? From what I have seen, the default seems to be that in STEM, without being subsidised by Chinese non-research MA students, the programmes from BA through PhD would be untenable at their current cost/expense level.

What is the mechanism by which a Chinese student at a US university (who pays higher tuition than the average native, especially the average native at risk of being "overlooked") reduces opportunities for Americans?

It's zero-sum thinking. He thinks a Chinese kid going to university is why his cousin Billy Bob went to trade school.

From the perspective of people actually named Billy Bob, going to trade school is not a bad outcome. Americans who blame immigrants for unemployment usually are upset about NEETs, not hypotheticals who could be in Harvard instead of state U, because they do not think that going to state U is anything to be upset about.

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